Monday, November 2, 2015

"Amazon is opening its first physical bookstore tomorrow" (AMZN)

It was all a bright shining lie.

From The Verge:

Amazon got its start as an online bookseller, and now — over 20 years later — it's decided to sell books the old fashioned way. On Tuesday, Amazon will open a store in Seattle called Amazon Books. It's not only one of Amazon's first physical locations, but it appears to be Amazon's first actual bookstore. Amazon says that it won't entirely be doing things like a traditional store, however; it'll be relying on Amazon.com data — including customer ratings, sales totals, and Goodread's popularity — to decide which books to stock. Curators will have some say, too.

In addition to selling books, Amazon is also going to be putting its devices on display. Visitors will be able to try Kindles, the Echo, the Fire TV, and Fire Tablets. This very much isn't a tech store, though. Photos show this to be a book store first and foremost; but like a Barnes & Noble, it also has an additional section for related (and not-so-related) technology. One thing that Amazon's store seems to be doing differently is putting all of its books face out, rather than spine out, and putting up a placard for each of them that contains their Amazon.com rating and an actual customer review. In-store prices will all match online prices, too (which means they'll probably change while you're holding them)....MORE